Imprint (Masters of Horror episode)

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“Imprint”
Masters of Horror episode

Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 13
Guest stars	Billy Drago Youki Kudoh Michie Itô Toshie Negishi
Written by	Daisuke Tengan
Directed by	Takashi Miike
Production no.	113
Original airdate	N/A
Episode chronology
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"Haeckel's Tale"	"None"

"Imprint" is the thirteenth episode of the first season of Masters of Horror. It aired in North America on February 25, 2006. It was originally scheduled to premiere on January 27, 2006 but was shelved by Showtime due to concerns over its extremely graphic and disturbing content, which features torture, incest and abortions. Hence, it was largely unavailable to American audiences until it was released to DVD on September 26, 2006.

The film was directed by Takashi Miike, a prolific director of yakuza films but also highly notable in the horror genre for his films Audition, Ichi The Killer and to a lesser extent One Missed Call, which is presently in post-production in Hollywood form.

1 Plot
2 Trivia
3 DVD
4 See Also
5 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

It's the late Victorian period. Christopher, an American journalist (played by Billy Drago), has been travelling around Japan for an unspecified period looking for Komomo (played by Michie Itô), a lost girlfriend who he promised he would rescue from her life of prostitution and return with him to America. To that end he lands on an island solely populated by whores and their masters. He's solicited by a syphilitic tout (played by Mame Yamada) who claims not to have seen Komomo, but reckons he should enter the brothel anyway as he's got to spend the night somewhere. Christopher agrees, and asks for the company of a girl (played by Youki Kudoh) he'd seen lurking in the shadows at the back of the room where the prostitutes solicit for business.

The woman joins him in the room he's been given. She's disfigured on the right side of her face, and has been since childhood. She's also a rather disturbed character – she says she feels a greater connection with the dead than the living. When quizzed about Komomo, she says she was here six months ago, but hanged herself when the love of her life failed to find her and take her away. Christopher is naturally distraught at this, and takes refuge in a bottle of sake. About to fall asleep, he asks the woman for a bedtime story, a story about herself; what he's given is a version of her life where her mother, a midwife, sells her on when her father dies from a lung disease. Eventually she's sold on and ends up on the island. Komomo, she says, was the most popular girl there and was making all the other girls jealous. To that end, when a jade ring was stolen from the brothel's Madam, Komomo was blamed and tortured to confess; she hanged herself as a consequence.

Christopher of course does and doesn't want to hear this – but nevertheless refuses to believe all the woman is telling him and pleads her to say more, to tell the truth. Thus begins a whole cycle of the woman refining her story, and Christopher not quite believing her and commanding her to say more, which ends in a largely horrid story of back-door abortions, incest, alcoholism, betrayal, and murder.

[edit] Trivia

Imprint DVD.

In the montage sequence where the young deformed woman is viewing the painting of demons, there is one humanoid demon who has a razor spike attached to his left heel, which he apparently used to cut a man in half from head to groin. This is most likely a direct allusion to another Takashi Miike film, Ichi the Killer, in which the main character would cut people in half in such a manner.
The teleplay for Masters of Horror: Imprint was written by Daisuke Tengan, based on the novel "Bokkê, kyôtê" (the title of which is in the Okayama dialect of Japanese) by Shimako Iwai.
The author of the novel, Shimako Iwai, has a cameo on the movie as the sadistic prostitute that places the needles.